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Topic: Wings of Dawn Lore (Read 17030 times)

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

I like this idea that what you'd expect gets flipped on its head and an engagement at a starlance favours the attacker, not the defender. And yet it is an advantage to the defender if they don't engage and put mines everywhere, costing the attacker time and resources.

I like the part about Starlance tactics, it's definitely something to keep in mind for the purpose of mission design.

I'm particularly happy about you people liking these ideas, because they fit with Spoon-sempai's (and mine) desire to make Starlance pushing/defending something more than "put a Starbase and a fleet on top of it and alpha strike everything that comes through". This was intended to make Starlances primarily pathways and not chokepoints, and allow for a more "flowing" warscape in this story and, (I hope), in the game. It's good to see that the response was "this is an interesting, if counterintuitive, new element" instead of "this is stupid".

I also don't think I've seen a tale before where both sides are hamstrung by politics. So that will be interesting too. Usually the leaders are limited only by their imaginations and resources, or only one side is hamstrung.

It was important for me to show that there's good and bad external and internal factors affecting each side. Note that I have yet to introduce several important characters and the baggage they will bring to the table...

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

I think system entry chokepoints are a road block in telling a story. Getting rid of them I think is a boon for any campaign except perhaps one where the opposition is overwhelming so it's then a big help to stop that overwhelming opposition.

Iirc in old WoD the Hierarchy just threw Nordera capital ships by the hundreds at starlances until they made a hole.

"Red Alert. Confirm battle-stations on all ships," he ordered curtly. "Weapons free on all fighters and all point-defense batteries. And, Ms. Downey, for God's sake, update the display, I need to see what in the hell is going on."

"Right away, Sir," the sensors station Lieutenant responded, her voice sheepish. "We've had some interference from leftover mine radiation; sensor feeds from the fighters coming up...now?"

The holographic display flickered; and then three glaring red dots blinked into existence next to that suspicious ball of dirt and ice that Simmons had just known the Delest would have used as a listening post or an ambush point. Squadron 3 was maneuvering wildly near the rock in question; bright yellow blinking lines connected the enemy ships with the CRF fighters, indicating incoming fire.

The holodisplay updated again. The two flanking ships were now marked as 'DDFg1' and 'DFg2'; the central ship acquired a distinct halo and the designation 'DDCap1'. Simmons, bent over the railing next to the holotank, squinting at the display, grumbled under his breath for a few seconds and then straightened up.

"Vector in Squadron 3 and 4 now and order Furious to scramble a heavy strike wing," he ordered. "All other flights are to stay in tight fleet formation. My compliments to Ms. Fallow and she's to keep her distance until reinforcements arrive. Mr Guillen, contact the Nelson and provide Arc Champion French with a sitrep. Inform him that we are engaging the enemy with smallcraft and standing by for incoming fire."

Simmons turned sharply and vaulted up the stairs with the agility of a man half his age. As he settled back into his seat, to her immediate right, Aretha couldn't help but notice how her Champion was wound up taut, like a coiled spring.

"Come on, you bastard," she heard him mutter, his eyes fixed in the distance. "Come on. Make your move."

Ter-Iio Aimi Dimitrievna Akiyama was sweating in both a figurative and literal sense, despite Orakul's excellent climate control. Her sensor technicians and analysts had given her a very good idea of what was waiting for her ship on the other side of this cold, Emperor-forsaken space rock and she wanted to hug it real tight and never leave its protective shadow. On the other hand, this situation was something they had planned for and she had clear instructions on what to do.

"Ma'am, tightbeam from Strela," her Comms officer said, his voice slightly distorted by the enclosed VR helmet he was wearing. "Iio Popov is on channel 2."

Ter-Iio Akiyama fiddled with her own earpiece, her eyes never leaving the sensor plot in front of her. "Orakul Command, listening," she said.

"Aimi!" Gregori's voice was tenser than she felt, which, in a way, was comforting. "Please tell me you eggheads have all the info you need."

"Yes, we've got what we came for and more," Akiyama replied. "I have the distinct impression we've outstayed our welcome."

Akiyama turned to her Nav and Tactical officers, reclining on their crash couches. Their fingers danced on holographic keyboards extending from the armrests and their headsets were directly linked to each other. "Dasha, Akihiro, I need a subspace plot out of here yesterday. Transmit to escorts and execute when ready."

"Already..."

"...prepared..."

"...five minutes ago..."

"...Skipper," came the response. "Charging Drives..."

"...T minus five thirty-five..."

"...Mark."

"Good," Akiyama leaned down from her raised bridge into the Pit; a long corridor of sensor consoles, databanks and analysts' stations, running the length of the ship's habitable portion. Two rows of seated engineers and technicians still pored over the data flowing in from the ships' sensor arrays. Her Chief Intel officer immediately looked up, awaiting orders. "Leytenant Aksyonov, five minutes to translation. Switch to active lattice and send out the handshakes."

"Aye aye, ma'am," the Leytenant responded; and immediately rushed down the corridor, calling out orders. Akiyama returned to her commander's chair and strapped herself in for what promised to be the five longest minutes of her life so far.

And for the first time since her arrival in this corner of nothingness, Orakul stopped listening and called out.

In the dark empty space around the Starlance, a considerable distance away from the main minefield and farther away than the CRF fighter patrols had reached, Orakul's call reached a dark, sleeping shape. And another. And then many, many more. Some (a very few) of them continued to sleep. Something had gone wrong with their simple electronic brains; or perhaps they had been killed in their sleep by the shrapnel and radiation that had been the inferno of the minefield's annihilation. No-one would ever know.

Still, sixty-five torpedo buoys woke up.

It took three seconds to boot and run through their self-diagnostics. Two more to run through the avionics package of the four DD12TR birds each of them was carrying and confirm that everything was running smoothly. And another two seconds to establish a handshake with Orakul's signal and download her latest sensor data on the CRF formations clustering around the Starlance.

If the rudimentary AIs of the buoys were any less rudimentary, they might have licked their proverbial lips at the quality of the targeting information they received. As it were, they just logged that downloading the relevant information took twice as long as the average expected time; popped their launch hatches and flushed the tubes, before triggering their own self-destruct sequences.

Two hundred and sixty birds streaked towards the enemy, in wings of bright fire.

The three enemy ships were still maneuvering to keep the asteroid between them and the fleet but, for now, they weren't his primary concern, Aretha noted. The hundreds of torpedoes converging on their fleet from all directions, like an ever-constricting sphere, occupied her Champion's sole attention. Aretha pondered for a moment whether it would be best to ask him whether the fleet was truly in any danger and, perhaps, remind him of the enemy ships that were surely planning to make their escape; but she decided that distracting him at such a time might not be the best of ideas.

Also, the incoming wall of missiles had a certain...ponderousness in it that made Aretha nervous. She didn't really mind him focusing on that, not at all.

"Tracking two hundred plus signatures, Sir!" came Downey's call and Aretha noted that the woman appeared quite calm. A promising officer, then and one that might warrant more attention. "Contact in thirty seconds...mark."

"Signal fleet: tight formation. Cut drives, all power to shields." Simmond's voice was, likewise, calm and professional and Aretha felt a considerable degree of satisfaction for how her officers comported themselves. This was the first time she commanded a Pegasus fleet from the front and, in all honestly, she had expected being under fire to be more...chaotic. The degree of professionalism shown by her crew was a very pleasant surprise. "Fighter patrols are clear for missile intercepts. Establish point defense links with the cruisers and open fire."

"Twenty seconds, Sir."

"Mr. Guillen, my compliments to the 2nd Group and I want the Gorgon and the Indefatigable to tighten up their formation. Now, Mr. Guillen."

"A-Aye, Sir."

"Missiles in range," came the call from Tactical. "All laser and ion batteries engaging...scoring good kills, Sir."

"Ten seconds!"

"Now!" Ter-Iio Akiyama called; and Orakul sceamed like a banshee, sweeping through all CRF frequencies with a pulse of jamming, deafening noise.

And then she ran like hell.

On board the Bellerophon, the holotank flickered, as sensors were scrambled and returns were lost in static. The not-inconsiderable ECM suites of the Lord-class kicked in immediately, but the initial lock on the incoming torpedoes was lost and had to be reacquired, something that cost the point-defense gunners precious seconds.

More importantly, Orakul's jamming interfered with the point defense network that effectively co-ordinated the CRF ships' firepower. As the network links collapsed and came back online, inefficient targeting solutions were identified and targeting had to be re-shuffled again, with more time lost. All in all, when the CRF point defense got its act back together and with the torpedoes less than five seconds from impact, no more than fifty birds had been shot down.

It didn't really matter.

Simmons and French had clustered their fleets together in two massive groups, behind an impenetrable wall of overlapping shields, overwhelming point-defense firepower and iron discipline; all of these came to bear in a near-instant. In those last five seconds, the space surrounding the CRF Dreadnoughts and their point-defense escorts became a near-solid wall of coherent light and hyperaccelerated ions that chewed up the Delest torpedoes in droves. More than half of the incoming missiles died in those furious five seconds; and then the rest slammed into the energised ether of the CRF shields, delivering their payload in blinding gouts of plasma.

Among Aretha's ships, Indefatigable, Atreus and Menelaus took the worst beating. The shields of the first two barely held under the merciless battering; both had several of their secondary shield emitters overload quite spectacularly (although the timely opening of the relevant compartments to hard vacuum promptly extinguised the ensuing fires). The latter's shields collapsed utterly and a final torpedo was barely intercepted by point-defense mere yards off the portside engines; the ensuing explosion knocked out a major thruster and left the ship limping but, thankfully, field-repairable.

French, on the other hand, had adopted a more mobile defense, with ships rotating between the inside and the outside of the cluster formation. As a result, more of his Dreadnoughts had been on the receiving end of torpedo fire; but the damage was more evenly spread out and none of his capitals had been crippled. Nelson herself, leading from the front, was one of the most heavily damaged ships, with only a failing primary shield emitter.

As one, the CRF ships ponderously turned toward their fleeing tormentor. Neither French nor Simmons were willing to take their ships into pursuit or break formation, in fear of more mines lying in wait; but they had more aces up their sleeves. All through the CRF fleets, pilots scrambled to their fighters and those that were already flying started up their jump cycles.

"Well, crap" Akiyama cursed, as the radiation died down and her sensors told her the tale. "I was hoping for at least a mission-kill on something. Oh well, it is what it is. Time to translation?"

"T-Minus..."

"...Two-oh-five..."

"...Mark." came the chorus from the Tac and Nav stations. "Also, Skipper...?"

"Three light fighter..."

"...and one heavy fighter..."

"...squadrons are..."

"...inbound at..."

"...full burn."

"Escorts are..."

"...engaging."

"Understood." Akiyama tapped her headset. "Leytenant Aksyonov, you are clear for full Pythia protocols; prioritise the pursuing fighters."

Orakul had neither the speed nor the maneuverability to evade the incoming strikecraft; and she certainly did not have the weaponry to swat them out of the sky. For her defence, she was almost completely dependent on her two Frigate escorts; and Drotik and Strela were very much aware of the importance of their ward.

As Flight Lieutenant Fallow's strike group closed the range to the Fleeing Delest ships, the two Frigates interposed their slender hulls between the incoming fighters and the sensor cruiser. And opened fire, with every particle cannon they could bring to bear.

The CRF Fireflies were more than maneuverable enough to dodge out of the escorts' protective envelope, but they had heavy fighter backup and, after the Delest torpedo attack on their fleet, they were seeing red. Fallow had her strikecraft ripple-fire missiles against the escorts and bored in with a bloodthirsty "Deus Vult!"

It was unfortunate that Orakul's EW suite chose that moment to give the pursuing fighters her full attention. Missile locks just vanished and the missiles themselves just corkscrewed off-target. Comms were blanketed with crackling static. Sensors and Nav systems went completely haywire. Fallow's squadron disintegrated into a confused semi-furball and pulled back in disarray, under the constant fire of the escort Frigates. The Fireflies staggered back, their shields crumbling, and, ironically, found cover behind the same rock they had chased the Orakul away from.

Flight Lieutenant Fallow would bitterly curse that moment of perceived humiliation for years to come. But she had, in a way, scored some success. For Orakul's EW suite had focused on her and not the rapidly inbound Tyrfings, which now unloaded their entire missile banks into Strela at a range of under a kilometre.

These weren't capital-grade torpedoes but, on the other hand, the Delest Frigate did not have the benefit of Dreadnought-level shields either. Her point-defense could only do so much against the fighters themselves and their ordnance. Her defenses crumpled after a few seconds of concentrated fire; and, as the Tyrfings peeled off to disengage, Strela's portside thruster went up in spectacular flames, with secondary explosions ripping her thin armor apart. She fell out of formation, trailing burning gas and debris, her engineering crews cutting power to her starboard engine as well, to prevent off-centre thrust.

It was probably the worst possible time for two more wings of Tyrfings to emerge from Subspace just a few thousand metres from Orakul's aft. The CRF fighters spent a couple of seconds re-orienting themselves after the rapid jump; and then they accelerated on full afterburners toward the retreating cruiser.

"T-Minus..."

"...ten seconds."

"All crew..."

"...brace for crash..."

"...translation."

The portals that formed in front of Orakul and the Frigates were tiny, hastily constructed, pathetic things, barely sufficient to admit them to Subspace; but they were sufficient. Ter-Iio Akiyama gritted her teeth and clenched every muscle in her body, as her ship sccccrrrrrrraped itself against the torn edges of realspace. For an infinite ten seconds, she felt truly nauseous. She tasted blue blood in her mouth and heard sweet steel all along the left side of her body and then the confusion was past and she was the commanding officer of the Delest sensor cruiser Orakul again, safe in the shimmering corridors of Subspace.

'Behind' her, in the direction-that-was-not-a-direction, her portal winked out with a flash of displaced ether. Two full wings' worth of missiles screamed past the space her ships had occupied only moments ago, to the howling frustration of the CRF pilots.

"T-plus..."

"...ten seconds..."

"...Mark."

"Translation..."

"...complete."

"All systems..."

"...nominal."

Akiyama breathed.

"Comms! Sensors! Are the Frigates still with us?" she cried into the Pit, unclasping her combat harness and staggering forward.

"Wait one, Ma'am," the Comms officer replied, and no mechanical distortion could hide the shakiness in his voice. "Drotik is checking in, still in formation. Strela...Strela is checking in, ma'am! They are piggybacking in our tunnel and their reactor is down to 30 percent output, but they're stable. They are reporting heavy casualties, but their bridge and jump drive are fine."

"Cut our speed and divert power to the jump drive," Akiyama ordered. "Take up as much stress on the tunnel as we can, to support them. Make for Hōseki at their best speed. And open a wide-broadband tightbeam channel to Drotik - I want you to download our scans and analyses to their databanks and I want them to go on ahead. The Praetor needs to see this and I don't want to risk a long-range subspace transmission, not even an encrypted one."

She returned to her holodisplay and called up one of the last scans of the CRF fleet. Two massive point-defense formations, weathering the storm of the Delest torpedo salvo.

Two formations.

"The Praetor needs to see this," Akiyama repeated, her voice tinged with confusion and wonder.

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

A patient opening of hostilities from our author. Lots of action, but no ships destroyed, except maybe the odd fighter. I wonder if there's a counter to that sensor disruption of an entire fleet. Short of blowing up the ship. If the DD fleet was on station, could it just keep putting out the signal indefinitely, hamstringing the whole CRF fleet and making it easy meat for the DD fleet?

Overlapping shields. Is that something that can be implemented in Wings of Dawn? You can fly under the shields of the Fura'ngle ships, but they'd have to have a very large sphere of influence to make it possible on such a scale. The only game I've played which had shields where this might have been possible is Star Trek Invasion on PS1. It was easy to fly your fighter under the shields of a capital ship, but even then the shields, while extending far out from the host ship, would have had to have two capital ships all but scraping up against each other in order to benefit from double protection.

I could see myself coming back to these if I ever end up writing about battles involving CRF ships. This is canon now. This is how the CRF fights and how the CRF military works.

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

I wonder if there's a counter to that sensor disruption of an entire fleet. Short of blowing up the ship. If the DD fleet was on station, could it just keep putting out the signal indefinitely, hamstringing the whole CRF fleet and making it easy meat for the DD fleet?

In order: Yes there is. Yes it could, but not as effectively as you might think.

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Overlapping shields. Is that something that can be implemented in Wings of Dawn?

Yes.

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I could see myself coming back to these if I ever end up writing about battles involving CRF ships. This is canon now. This is how the CRF fights and how the CRF military works.

Keep in mind that this is how the CRF fights under very specific circumstances.

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

I wonder if there's a counter to that sensor disruption of an entire fleet. Short of blowing up the ship. If the DD fleet was on station, could it just keep putting out the signal indefinitely, hamstringing the whole CRF fleet and making it easy meat for the DD fleet?

Orakul in particular is primarily built as a sub- and realspace sensor platform - think a massive AWACS ship in FS terms. She can do EW, but that's not her primary role. Her disruptive capabilities are directly tied to how much power she's willing to sink into active jamming and CRF systems can, eventually, adjust to interference. What she can do, quite well, is jam a particular ship or frequency for a longer period of time (dedicating a lot of her EW capabilities to counteracting the enemy's countermeasures or just drown them in noise) or do the massive frequency sweep she did early on. The latter is useful, to a degree, but it has its drawbacks. Namely that it involves the ship pumping out lots and lots of EM and subspace interference, which lights her up as a beacon to enemy sensors when they, inevitably, adjust. It's the equivalent of lighting a massive searchlight into your enemy's eyes in a night battle - it might blind them for a while and allow you to get a sucker punch or two in, but it also screams 'here I am' when they get their act back together.

So no, keeping wide-scale interference going is not viable in the long run.

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Overlapping shields. Is that something that can be implemented in Wings of Dawn?

Yes.

The above is the standard pre-WoD-main-storyline CRF formation for receiving massed torpedo volleys (add a smattering of PD destroyers all over the formation at your discretion). It is the equivalent of this:

As you can probably imagine, maneuvering in such a formation is problematic. It gives you situational double shield layers (so, if one collapses, there is another layer to soak up fire) and allows for a heavier PD screen. It has its drawbacks, however. Firstly, the allied ships need to be positioned carefully, so as not to limit the larger ships' PD batteries' arcs of fire. Secondly, it is a static formation - there's a reason Simmons ordered a full stop and all engine power diverted to shields; if you blink or move you run a high risk of ramming a friendly. This is not a formation for green or undisciplined fleets to assume.

The CRF are that disciplined, however. They are good enough to make this work.

And, on a sidenote, the different tactics the two fleet commanders employed should tell you something about the quality of their forces and their own skills (at the tactical level, at least).

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

French's formation would seem to be the harder to pull off and yielded the better results. However, I'm unable to visualise why it was better. The whole thing was over in a few seconds, so there wouldn't have been much time for movement, and I would have thought staying still would have improved the accuracy of the point defences both from being stationary and from not having to worry about moving friendlies. And also the shields would get a power boost from using the power not being used on the engines.

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

French's formation would seem to be the harder to pull off and yielded the better results. However, I'm unable to visualise why it was better. The whole thing was over in a few seconds, so there wouldn't have been much time for movement, and I would have thought staying still would have improved the accuracy of the point defences both from being stationary and from not having to worry about moving friendlies.

There are several ways to move in such situations. Those include rolling the ship around to spread out the strain on the ship emitters; having the escorting destroyers nudge around to intercept specific torpedoes on their shields (and spare the capital's shields for where it's more important); or move out of the way to uncover specific PD batteries on the escorted capital ship. A single torpedo getting through can make a difference and having a Lord roll ninety degrees or having a destroyer nudge a few dozen metres to the side to catch a slip-through missile on her shields can be critical.

It is much harder to pull off, because of the exact reasons you've noted; but note that the CRF PD network is organised on a fleet level. The minutiae of taking into account the motions of the ships are mostly automated. The Admiral and his Knights have to a) trust in their weapons to not fail them (a big thing in the CRF 'Knightly' way of thinking) and b) handle the ballet of all the little ship motions that will truly optimise their performance. Some don't risk (b). Some do. It can backfire.

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And also the shields would get a power boost from using the power not being used on the engines.

It has been established that WoD ships have reaction thruster tech for small-scale maneuvers. In such cases, power drain is minimal.

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

In addition to Enioch already excellent explanation, capitalships can also increase the size of their bubble to some extend (at the cost of a higher power consumption of course) to aid in the flexibility of these kind of formations. (For those of you who have played Earth defense force, I'm sure you can attest to the annoyance of overlapping shield bubbles!)

I think system entry chokepoints are a road block in telling a story. Getting rid of them I think is a boon for any campaign except perhaps one where the opposition is overwhelming so it's then a big help to stop that overwhelming opposition.

Exactly. That was a thing I was kind of struggling with for a while when coming up with WoD RE's plotline. Its pretty limiting to have a starlance basically be a locked door, unless you drive a tank through it. It limits the story to either having one side invade a system enmass or not at all. Establish a bunch of powerful static defenses at the starlance and the attacker wouldn't stand a chance of achieving a breakthrough without being completely crippled from the resulting battle.So when Enioch and I, were bouncing some ideas back and forth about the workings of the WoDverse, it was very convenient for me that Enioch solved that particular storytelling roadblock with logical thinking and good words. While making perfect sense in the established workings of WoD's subspace.

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

Without that second picture I wouldn't have appreciated the use of British troops to depict CRF formations. Oh I knew what they were in the first picture, but I didn't make the connection. I don't know where either of them were taken from.

Back when I was trying to make a campaign for old WoD, I had this long term idea of having three campaigns if I had succeeded with the first one and been hungry for more, each set in a different system as the Hierarchy pushed further in. And conveniently avoiding all the starlance fighting. Though there was going to be a starlance evacuation mission as the final mission on the losing path of the first campaign, since the system was so remote the starlance wasn't full of defences. The losing path would have had you relegated to supporting and leaving with the main evacuation, and thus easier missions compared to the winning path which would have had you out there in Hierarchy territory disrupting the Hierarchy and rescuing stragglers in daring missions and ending up being among the last to leave. The winning path should be harder, not the losing path.

Re: Wings of Dawn Lore

A smaller force or raiding party could just jump out to any point in the system, but then would have to deal with the (formidable) Delest garrison.

The minefield needs to be cleared so that the entirety of the CRF fleets can jump in; and then a supply base / fortification needs to be set up in the area, to secure a path of retreat. Then you can push on.